Saturday, February 17, 2007

[ I strongly suggest following the links after the quotes, to read the author's full text. ]

“The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history... There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.”

“I am ... unwilling to endorse demands for immediate bills of impeachment against Bush and Cheney, for the simple and compelling reason that such an approach is less likely to succeed. Recent history teaches us that the direct route to impeachment may not be the most effective.”

I wrote this, and believed this, last December 5. Intervening events, and some sober reflection, have convinced me that I was wrong.

The intervening events. Since I wrote those words, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has told the Congress, under oath, that the Constitution does not guarantee the protection of habeas corpus to the citizens of the United States. If he believes this and acts accordingly, Gonzales has violated his oath of office. So too the President and Vice President if they endorse Gonzales’ opinion. Congress must demand that Bush, Cheney and Gonzales repudiate the Attorney General's pronouncement and reaffirm their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. If they refuse, then they must be removed from office.

In addition, both Bush and Cheney have expressed their determination to add more troops to the Iraqi occupation force, despite the opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an accumulating roster of the military, both active and retired, the Iraq Study Group, the American Public, and the Congress. By announcing that nothing, not even an act of Congress, will deter them, the Bush/Cheney team have, in effect, proclaimed themselves dictators. If this proclamation is to fall short of an implementation of rule by decree, the Congress must promptly and decisively reinstate its co-equal status with the Bush Administration, and it must send back that message to the White House with an explicit threat of impeachment.

Finally, over the past two months it has become apparent that Bush and Cheney might launch an attack on Iran. Most informed observers agree that this would be an act of insanity, that would unite the world against the United States, probably sharply curtail the production and shipment of oil from the Persian Gulf throwing the US and the world into a depression, and just possibly igniting a third World War. This attack might be prevented by an act of Congress refusing to fund such an attack and proclaiming explicitly that the Congress, in accordance with its Constitutional authority, forbids the President to launch an attack against Iran. That act of Congress should state that failure of the President to obey this act would result in impeachment.

“My investigative-reporter hero from the 1950s and '60s, I. F. Stone, told me decades later that he delighted in finding news nuggets not in front-page articles but buried deep inside, sometimes in the closing paragraphs, of mass-media stories.

This observation has served me well in doing political analysis over the years. It has helped me figure out how best to read articles, and has reinforced my theory of news reporting as too often being sleight-of-hand entertainment: distracting your eyes and mind while the real object for scrutiny is secreted elsewhere.

Indeed, one could carry the argument even further: Politics is distraction, often a weapon of mass-distraction. Usually, government officials and their P.R. toadies want you to look one place while they carry out their dirty deeds somewhere else.

What made me think about all this was the little-talked-about subject generally missing from, or on occasion hidden deep inside, stories about Bush's military "surge" into Iraq.